Peter Foster is the Telegraph's US Editor based in Washington DC. He moved to America in January 2012 after three years based in Beijing, where he covered the rise of China. Before that, he was based in New Delhi as South Asia correspondent. He has reported for The Telegraph for more than a decade, covering two Olympic Games, 9/11 in New York, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, the post-conflict phases in Afghanistan and Iraq and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Cuppa with your Indiana Jones?

It's almost six months since we arrived in Golden Bay – the mid point of our year off here – and already I know one of the things I shall miss when we depart: Takaka's movie theatre.

Small-town living can be a little quiet in winter, where the days are short and, like today, grey and rainy. As Mick, the DJ on our local radio station observed recently, the place is so deserted it feels like there should be tumbleweed blowing down the main street.

All of which means a trip to the cinema is a bit of a treat and this Friday it's the turn of Indiana Jones to swing through town in pursuit of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. For me (b.1972) it's a â€˜must see', whatever the critics say.

But not for us the soulless multiplex experience common to cinema goers the world over, instead we shall watch this piece of Hollywood tosh in the comfortable surroundings of The Village Theatre.

While the auditorium can be a bit cold and draughty on a winter's night – although nothing that a polypropylene hiking top and a woolly hat can't cope with – you get about three times the leg-room of a standard movie theatre.

And if you don't fancy the conventional flip-seats, then you can always stretch out on the line of sofas and couches which constitute the front row and are the perfect place for a snooze if you've picked a duff movie.

Like in India, there is an interval during every showing so you can take a pit-stop and buy refreshments in the form of a scalding hot mug of tea (served by the same lady who took the money for your ticket) which you are allowed to take back into the theatre to warm your palms as the second half unfolds. Bliss.

The multiplexes could also learn from The Village Theatre's admirably draconian policy on mobile phones which promises to throw offending patrons bodily out of the door, phone and all.

I particularly like the part addressed to children, which warns that "we'll phone your parents and tell them where you are".

Does this mean a lot of kids in Takaka sneak out to the movies without their parents' permission? Whatever will the young hoons be up to next?

PS…someone was asking if our new house was warm. It is, and dry too. It was built by a Canadian who seems to have insulated the place much as he would have done in Nova Scotia.